On David's Old Testament God cartoon

[SavageSotoParticipant]

I particularly love David’s cartoon today about the old testament God being violent. I posted it on my wall and got a comment about it being God’s “justice” and we can’t have a standard of justice of our own and how it has to come from the Bible. Part of the issue I have with entertaining that idea is this: if one is to accept that God sometimes commands people to do violence against others to execute his “justice’, you pretty much lose any moral grounds to argue against violence done in the name of God outside of the bible. How can we really call the acts violence done in God’s name in the bible as good and just, but call the acts of violence on 9/11 as unjust or wrong? At the least, you would logically have to sympathize with those people and any one else in history that has ever done violence in God’s name, since they thought they were executing God’s judgment.

The fundamentalist may argue that the 9/11 terrorists were serving a false god and that they were really commanded by satan or something, but heaven forbid they turn that argument around onto their own scriptures. Maybe the israelites thought God was telling them to do terrible things when in fact God didn’t have jack shit to do with it? What evidence is there to the contrary?

 

• This topic was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by  SavageSoto.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by  SavageSoto.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 3 months ago by  SavageSoto.

[AgnosticBelieverParticipant]

Good point. Can’t argue that one. Anyone can invoke God’s name to do violence. Praise God!

[Tim WBParticipant]

This is why I would need an incredible amount of evidence before I was violent, discrimintatory, or even just obnoxious in God’s name…

 

Edit: fix autocorrect error

[Schroedingers-CatParticipant]

I think Joshua does present a lot of problems (and some of the material around this). I don’t know how I resolve it, and just saying “it was wrong”, or “ignore it” is not a solution for me.

I think I understand that this was part of the people trying to understand what God was saying, and adding their own interpretations to it. The fact that the Israelites struggled to know what God was saying, and had to learn getting it wrong (or rather, maybe getting it right, but misinterpreting the means), I find very encouraging. It is struggle to know what God wants, and we do get it wrong.

God is bigger than that, however, and brings his direction out of it despite this.

[JeffPrideauxParticipant]

I ‘ve heard it argued that since God created everyone, He has the right to destroy every one if He wants… And that we should be grateful that He decided to create at all.  Praise The Lord.

I can’t say that I can relate to this theology.

[starfielderParticipant]

no argument here.

[Peter StanleyParticipant]

Bear in mind that I have never been an evangelical Christian; I have long understood that the Bible is not inerrant; I have never believed that Adam and Eve were literally the first two people who lived on the earth; and I came to the conclusion maybe 30 years ago that there is no hell (as it is traditionally understood) when we die.

Just suppose that the Old Testament is the story of God’s chosen nation, written by people who were trying to understand God, in what were the early days of human civilisation. These stories have been kept alive by the Jews. The stories in the New Testament were written many years after the actual events. They were attempts to keep the stories alive in a local language. They were translated into Koine Greek and subsequently into Latin where a new ‘theology’ was developed that distorted some of the meaning of the original language.

Then think of the Old Testament and the New Testament being the stories of God’s intervention with mankind up until about 2,000 years ago. Life has moved on. We now have far more understanding of the place of wars and violence. We recognise that this is not the way it is meant to be. God is a God of LOVE. This is surely the major lesson that mankind needs to learn. How are we going to learn that without experiencing the results of the opposite? Could it be that the only way is to see the futility of selfishness and self-centred attitudes? Could it be that this has to happen before the return of Christ (whatever that means)?

That may sound crazy but I was a member of a Sabbath keeping church that has in the past not unreasonably, been referred to as both a cult and a sect.

Food for thought?

[AgnosticBelieverParticipant]

For those not in America, there is a popular saying “Praise the Lord pass the ammo” lol

[GaryParticipant]

This weekend’s Perseid Meteor Shower has reminded me of something from my childhood that has much meaning to me now.

 

My family always referred to meteors streaking through the sky as “shooting stars”.  It was wonderful to me to see them and of course we always were kind of excited at the event. Making a wish was a tradition and it was fun…even comforting.  I remember one day, after I had learned about stars in school, wondering what would make a star suddenly become very bright and shoot across the sky.  It did not make sense to me.  I also remember not questioning (at first) what I had been told.  I mean after all, I had been taught they were shooting stars by people I loved and trusted and I could see the evidence with my own eyes.  They were in fact brighter than the other stars in the sky so they must be something big like a star.  But finally the questions became too much and I sought out an answer.  Imagine finding out something which I could see, and had been told was a “star”, was really not a star at all.  I remember this journey of childhood discovery quite well and when I reflect back upon it now it brings me comfort.  I learned as a child that questioning what we have been told is a good thing.

 

But what if what “we have been told” was actually written down in a book that we considered to be the very words of God Himself?  I mean, suppose this book stated that the Earth was fixed and immovable and that the heavens revolved around it.  We have been told this by those we love and trusted, and the the evidence of it is something that we can see with our own eyes.  Of course there might come a time when we would wonder about such a thing and it would no longer make sense to us.  When we would begin to question if this was actually right those who promoted that this book was the very words of God would attack us and call us apostate, they would say we were placing our own knowledge above God’s or that we were simply filled with the seed of the devil and were seeking to lead people astray…into the very pits of hell if you will.  (Look up Martin Luther’s quotes on the subject…LOL)  Even today there are those who STILL embrace this teaching and proclaim that the Earth is flat and fixed upon an immovable foundation and the heavens rotate around it.  They know this to be true because “God’s Word” declared it so.

 

But what if what we have been told, and was written down in a book we believed was “God’s very words” was that God had slaughtered millions, had killed innocent children for their parents sins, etc. etc. etc?  What if we begin to wonder how such unconscionable acts could be reconciled with the belief in a God of Love?

 

What if?

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